


Til Death Do Us...Whatever

by mithrel



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blanket Permission, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Podfic Welcome, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A trip to a planet where the Doctor and Rose must pretend to be married has unforeseen consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til Death Do Us...Whatever

“Say, Rose?”

She looked over at him from the other side of the control room. “Hmm?”

“You ever seen the Light Falls on Xergosia?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, you gotta see it, it’s brilliant! Only…” something occurred to him and he sagged. “Nah, never mind, we can’t.”

She looked confused. “Why not? Is the planet dangerous?”

“Xergosia dangerous?” he scoffed, “Nah, safe as houses.”

“So have they never encountered humans before, or…?”

“Doesn’t matter, they look exactly like humans,” he paused. “At least on the outside.”

“Then what…”

He ran a hand through his hair. He should never have brought it up. Now he would have to explain. “All citizens on Xergosia have to get married at sixteen.”

Her brow furrowed. “So?”

“They have to show proof of marriage to anyone who asks.”

“So? The psychic paper can take care of that can’t it?”

“Well, ye-ah, but—“

“I can pretend to be married to you for a few days.”

He winced inwardly. Well, there went that theory. She was acting as though it was nothing to pretend to be married to him…no, worse, like it was something she’d _put up with_ for the sake of seeing something interesting. He sighed. Ah, well. Better that way, really.

“Well, then,” he said, hoisting a smile onto his face as he manipulated the TARDIS’ controls. _“Allons-y.”_

He was going to regret this, he just knew it.

###

They arrived on Xergosia without incident, parked the TARDIS in an out-of-the-way spot, showed the “certificate” to a passing official, and went on their way.

It was late evening, and the Doctor cursed his timing again. They were going to have to find somewhere to spend the night, and knowing Xergosia…

“We need to find a hotel.”

“Can’t we just go back to the TARDIS?”

He shook his head. “Out of our way.”

“OK, a hotel it is then.”

They found one a few streets over, and checked in as “Cordot and Sero Darsit.”

They walked up to the room and unlocked it, and Rose headed straight for the bathroom, saying, “God, I feel disgusting! I need a shower.”

A moment later her head poked out of the bathroom. “Doctor?”

He looked up from where he was rummaging in his bag. He didn’t normally carry a bag, but he’d had a feeling something like this would happen. He never did have any good luck, at least not for himself. “Hmm?”

“What exactly is this thing?”

He knew what she meant. “It’s a steriliser. Xergosians use them instead of showers or baths. Just step in and press the button. You don’t even need to take your clothes off.” Good thing, too. The thought of Rose naked in the next room was too much.

She looked at him suspiciously. “This isn’t going to be like that disinfectant is it?”

He chuckled. “No, you won’t even get wet.” At her continued narrowed eyes, he said, “I promise!”

“Anything weird happens and I’m shoving you in here with all your clothes on!” she threatened, and disappeared.

He chuckled again. A moment later she came out, rummaged in her own bag and found a nightdress and her dressing gown. “I suppose I don’t need to brush my teeth?”

He shook his head. “Steriliser takes care of that.”

“Well, I suppose it’s convenient, if a little utilitarian.” She disappeared into the bathroom again.

When she came out, in her nightdress and dressing gown, she seemed to notice the bed for the first time. “There’s only one.”

Now came the problem. “Yeah, Xergosian hotels generally don’t have single beds except for children. Don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“But if the housekeeping staff, or whatever, comes in, won’t they be suspicious?”

“We’ve had a row.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea—“

“It’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“No, we can both sleep in the bed. It’s no big deal.”

No big deal. Stab, twist. But he couldn’t protest any more without her becoming suspicious. “Fine.”

“Which side you want?”

“What? Oh. I dunno, doesn’t matter, really.”

“OK.” She took off her dressing gown, folded it, and laid it on a nearby chair. He swallowed, grabbed his own pyjamas and retreated into the bathroom to change.

###

When he came out again, she was already in bed. He slipped in beside her, trying his hardest to avoid making contact.

“Goodnight, Doctor,” she said, turning away from him.

Was that a signal or…no, he was being paranoid. She probably just liked to sleep on her side. “Goodnight, Rose. Sweet dreams.”

###

Ten minutes later, Rose was asleep, and he was trying to remember the coordinates for every place and time he’d ever been. He couldn’t let himself sleep; he didn’t know what he might do.

His mind drifted away from coordinates and to his past; specifically past Companions. He remembered each and every one of them perfectly, right back to Susan, his granddaughter. It was possible she was still alive, since he’d left her on Earth. He’d never checked. He’d been close to all of them (well, most of them, he thought wryly, thinking of Turlough and Adam Mitchell) but hadn’t let any of them in, not really, except for Susan and Romana. He couldn’t afford it. Sarah Jane had been upset when she’d realised he’d never mentioned her, but he couldn’t. It hurt too much to think about the past, so he buried it, covered those memories over.

This wasn’t the first time he’d fallen in love with a Companion. Jo, Sarah Jane…It would almost be better if they were all dead and gone, but he could go anywhere, any time. He could see them again, all of them. He wouldn’t even have to explain anything, since they wouldn’t recognise him.

The worst were the ones he couldn’t save. He’d promised Jackie that he’d always bring Rose back, but he knew he might not be able to keep that promise. So many of his Companions had died…Katarina, Sara, Dodo, Adric…That was why he’d taken Rose back to see her father, because he knew why she was doing it, that she needed some closure. It was also why he was so harsh with her when she changed things. He’d been tempted to do the same, to save them, and had known he couldn’t.

What was it about her, that made it so hard to keep his distance? No matter how close he’d got to previous Companions, he’d always been aware that they’d leave, go back to Earth, or whatever other planet they came from, though most of his Companions were human. But Rose…she’d broken through, he loved her more than he’d ever loved Jo or Sarah Jane.

It was going to kill him when she left.

He dismissed the maudlin thoughts, and got back to remembering coordinates.

###

He woke up slowly. He was in a bed (you’d think that would be obvious, but after more than nine hundred years with enemies like his, it wasn’t always the case) and someone was in his arms. He smiled, then memory caught up with him, and his eyes snapped open.

He hadn’t meant to sleep, but at some point he must have. He didn’t know precisely what had happened, if he’d reached out for her (damn his subconscious anyway) or if she’d turned to him, bur Rose was in his arms, her head pillowed on his chest.

Well, now what? Sooner or later she was going to wake up, and then things would get awkward. Just as he thought this, she stirred.

He froze, but she only gave him a sleepy smile, not seeming to care about the fact that he was holding her. “Good morning.”

“’Morning.” What? She wasn’t angry?

“Did you sleep well?”

He thought about it for a second. “I did, yeah.” Odd, that. He usually had nightmares.

“Well, I better get dressed if we’re going to see the Light Falls today.”

“Right then, yeah,” he said, still trying to figure out what had just happened, as she headed into the bathroom.

###

Since they’d got up late, they decided to get some lunch before going to the Falls. He found a restaurant close to the hotel, and he headed in.

“Hang on a mo!”

He turned to Rose. “Sorry?”

“How are we going to pay for this?”

He took something like a triangular blue credit card out of his pocket. “With this.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Did someone a favour last time I was here.”

She looked relieved. “I thought you were going to say you hacked into the system.”

He looked wounded. “Would I do something like that?”

She pretended to think about it for a moment. “We-ell…”

“Oh, come on!”

She grinned and followed him into the restaurant.

###

The restaurant was something like a buffet, and rather than individual tables, there were several large tables, seating about a dozen people.

The Doctor took a plate and handed her another. He immediately began piling food on his plate. “This is brilliant! I haven’t had Xergosian food in ages!”

She looked suspiciously at the food. “Is it edible?”

He gave her a withering look. “Of course! I wouldn’t poison you, would I?”

“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m not sure what to try.”

“Try a little of everything! Honestly, you’re on a different planet, experiment a little!”

She ended up taking some noodles in a pale blue sauce, and sort of pale yellow mush. At the Doctor’s insistence, she also took some pale pink spheres that he said were sweet pastries.

He paid for their food and looked around for a table. “Now, let’s see. Ah, over there.”

Rose looked. “But there’s already people sitting there.”

“Of course, Xergosians always eat meals together. Plenty of room for us.”

###

“Hello, excuse me, do you mind if we sit here?”

The Xergosian couple sitting at the table looked up at them. “No, of course not,” the man said. The Doctor and Rose sat down.

Rose looked at them circumspectly. They appeared to be in their forties, but who knew with aliens? The Doctor spoke up. “I’m Cordot, and this is my wife Sero.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the woman said. “I’m Bara and this is my husband Lesek.” She paused. “If you don’t mind my asking…”

“Yes?” the Doctor prompted.

“Well, you seem to be quite a bit older than her…”

He sighed. “Yes, well, Sero isn’t my first wife. Jila died of kopran fever several years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s all right.” Rose stared at him with her mouth slightly open, not believing what she was hearing. When had he come up with this? He shot her a look and she recovered. “There were no widows, so I had to marry someone younger. I met Sero not long after Jila died, and we got married soon after.”

The Xergosians nodded.

“Tell me, do you have any children?” Rose asked suddenly, trying to shift the focus of the conversation from them.

Lesek smiled. “Yes, three, two boys and a girl.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Eighteen years.”

So they were in their mid-thirties, not forties. “And do you have any children?” Bara asked.

“God, no!” Rose said, without thinking.

The Xergosians looked shocked. What had she said?

“None of our own,” the Doctor interjected. “Although I have a son from my previous marriage. We’ve been trying, but it just isn’t taking. We might have to visit the birth banks.” Rose stared at him again, this time in something approaching incredulous anger. How dare he?! She was sure sometimes that he did care about her, but he never acted on it, and now he was blithely talking about…her thoughts stalled. Oh, he was going to hear about this once they were alone!

“I’m sorry,” Bara said sympathetically. “I hope it works out.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor said gravely.

They continued making small talk, while Rose focussed on her food. The sauce on the noodles tasted much like alfredo sauce, and the mush turned out to be some sort of vegetable, quite good actually. The spheres tasted like marzipan. As she ate, she listened to the conversation.

“Are you in the city long?”

“No, we just came here to visit the Light Falls. Sero’s never seen them.”

“Oh, you’ll love them,” Bara said. Rose smiled.

A few minutes later, Lesek and Bara finished their meal. “Nice to have met you Cordot, Sero,” Lesek said. His wife nodded.

“Likewise,” the Doctor replied, and Rose smiled.

When they left, Rose turned to the Doctor furiously. " _'Not my first wife’?_ And what was that about trying to have _children?!?”_

He waved his hands around and shook his head. “Xergosians usually marry their contemporaries. If one of them dies, the other gets married again almost immediately.”

“Without even time to grieve? That’s awful!”

He shrugged. “That’s the way it is. That was the only way to explain the fact that I’m older than you.”

“But you didn’t have to say that about children!"

He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more than usual. “Yes, I did. You saw how they reacted when you said you didn’t have children. Xergosians hit puberty right about the time they get married, and start trying to have children almost immediately. You’re older than sixteen, so you should have at least one child by now.”

She shook her head. “And what was that you said about…birth banks?”

He nodded. “Xergosians aren’t allowed to have more than three children, although sometimes a Xergosian woman will get pregnant more than three times. Children are precious on Xergosia, so when that happens the embryo is taken out and put into stasis in the birth banks for couples who for whatever reason are infertile.”

“So it’s like…IVF?”

“Sort of, although it’s more like surrogacy and adoption.”

She was starting to get a headache. “Can we see the Falls now?”

He grinned. “Sure.”

###

They took the Xergosian version of a taxi to the Light Falls, using the card to pay.

They were dropped off near the viewing station, a cliff opposite the Falls. No one else was there. Rose stared at it, her mouth open. “It’s beautiful. What is it?”

“There’s a magnetic field just at the beginning of the Falls, there,” he pointed, “It excites the photonic particles in the planet’s atmosphere. Normally they’ve got a neutral electrical charge and no magnetic charge at all, but the field concentrates them, and charges them, and the field of the rest of the planet draws them down.”

“All right, then.” He wasn’t sure how much of his explanation she’d actually understood.

He’d seen the Falls many times, so he wasn’t that interested, but seeing Rose’s reaction made him appreciate them again. They were made of discrete particles, not liquid, flowing along the top of the cliff and down, splitting into smaller and smaller streams on the way. They changed color constantly, so the effect was like a giant stream of fiber-optics. He’d seen similar things on Earth, on Christmas trees or in fountains, but this was natural, not artificial.

“What makes them change color like that?”

“What?” He looked over at her. “Oh, the planet’s magnetic field is always shifting slightly, so the colors change.”

“Well that at least I understood. It’s beautiful,” she repeated. “I wish I had a cam–Hang on.” She reached into her pocket, took out her mobile, and snapped several pictures.

He wasn’t looking at the Falls. He was facing them, but his attention was focused on Rose. She looked so beautiful, with the play of light over her features. He should leave her, take her home and go on his way, but he couldn’t. She might get killed, and he was too selfish to let her go.

“It’s very romantic.”

He started slightly, guiltily, and hoped she hadn’t noticed. “Is it? I suppose so, yeah.”

“I bet this is a popular honeymoon spot.”

“Xergosians don’t have honeymoons.”

“How sad. What do they do to celebrate a wedding?”

The Doctor gave her a Look. She threw up her hands. “Never mind, I don’t want to know!”

“What, you don’t want to celebrate our marriage?” Oh no, now his mouth was running away with him again.

She gaped at him. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

He laughed softly, to cover his unease, and she mercifully let the matter drop.

###

They had stayed at the Light Falls for several hours, and although Rose wanted to see them at night, she had gotten cold long before sunset. He’d given her his coat, and they’d headed back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor was relieved that he’d got through it without anything happening. He turned to Rose. “Right, where next?”

She didn’t answer, just ran her hands idly over the controls. “Rose?”

She jumped. “Right, sorry, um…I dunno, you pick.”

He walked over to her, concerned. “Rose? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, really, I’m just a bit…tired.”

“Right,” he said, not believing it for a minute. “Tell you what, how about you tell me what’s really going on?”

“Nothing, I just thought…Never mind.”

“Rose–” before he could say anything else she’d put her hand on his cheek, and he saw she was crying.

Reflexively, he took her hand and held it between both of his. “Now, don’t, don’t cry Rose, please.”

“It’s just that I thought…after everything we’d been through together, all the times you saved my life, I thought…but I guess not.”

Oh, hell. “Rose, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“But why? Why is it so hard to love me?”

Oh, Rassilon. Now he was for it. “Rose, it’s not like that. It’d be very easy to love you, but I can’t.”

“But why not?”

“It’s like I told you when we met Sarah Jane. You’ll leave, Rose. Eventually, you’ll want to go home to Earth–”

“But I won’t!”

“Or else you’ll find some other planet you want to stay on, or, God help me, we’ll encounter something I can’t save you from. Even if you don’t, even if you stay with me for the rest of your life, I’m immortal, you’re not. I’m going to lose you, it’s inevitable.” The curse of the Time Lords. Sarah Jane had had her heart broken once; his heart broke every time he lost a Companion. Every time it happened, he swore he wouldn’t take on another Companion, but something happened and he ended up inviting someone else to travel with him, or else enough time went by that he’d forget how much it hurt, and it’d start all over.

She looked at him, tears in her eyes. Then she took a deep, shuddering breath, and kissed him.

He almost pulled back, but Rassilon, he’d wanted to do this ever since he first saw her…well, all right, since the first time he’d got a good look at her, since their first meeting hadn’t exactly been conducive to romance. He’d never kissed her, not really, not properly. There’d been three times something like a kiss happened, but the first time it hadn’t been him, at least not this incarnation, and he’d only done it to draw the Time Vortex out of her, although he’d been glad of the excuse. The second time, it had been Cassandra, not Rose, and the last he’d been in a spacesuit, so there was no contact.

This was a kiss just between the two of them, no possession, no peril, and it burned more than the Time Vortex had.

She pulled away from him, and began to walk away, but he grabbed her wrist. “Rose.”

“Take me home. Please.”

The heartbreak in her voice made something twist in his chest, and he didn’t care anymore. “No.”

“But–”

“I’m not letting you go.” And he leaned down and kissed her. He would lose her, he knew, but he’d always have the memories. And now, for this small measure of time, he had her, and it would be enough.


End file.
